Solved Thunderbird 115.6 sluggish today

Wisewiz · Dec 21, 2023

I use Thunderbird on both my office machines to handle my Gmail. Yesterday, I updated to 115.6. Today, Tbird hangs at "Sending login information," then when it seems to make progress, it hangs again at "looking for folders." The blue activity indicator in the Status bar stays on for a long time when I do anything, even deleting a message or emptying the Trash.

I tried going back to 115.5.2, and that didn't help. Updated to 115.6 again, and no change. I've emptied and compacted folders, and even tried deleting the msf files in Mail\Local Folders. No help.

This malfunctioning began, AFAIK, this morning. On both computers. Normallly, from clicking the Thunderbird icon to having the window fully operative and responding quickly to all clicks only takes about two-three seconds. Everything works extremely quickly.

Today, it seems to be having trouble communicating with Gmail, but I've never experienced such a problem before, and I've changed no passwords or login information.

Any ideas?

Quandary · Dec 21, 2023

No issues here on laptop or desktop. Only one suggestion. Select Inbox, RMB, select Properties, and then Repair Folder.

das10 · Dec 21, 2023

Wisewiz; This may be irrelevant to your issue, but, I am still on 115.5.2 , and as far as connecting to mail servers is concerned, had a problem with both Gmail and Outlook accounts (both using POP), this morning, where Thunderbird appeared to hang after pressing the Get Messages button. Although another (not with Gmail or Outlook) account had no problem connecting and retrieving the messages. It just seemed to sit there showing network activity but doing nothing, before I gave up and shut it down. This happened several times until around this afternoon, after which it seems to be back to normal.

I wonder if you can glean any problems using the about:config > mailnews.imap.loglevel set to All and view any output in Menu > Developer Tools > Error Consol , although according to the source page, that loglevel may not work in the case of imap in stable version 115.

MailNews:Logging - MozillaWiki

wiki.mozilla.org

trumpy81 · Dec 21, 2023

Wisewiz said:
I use Thunderbird on both my office machines to handle my Gmail. Yesterday, I updated to 115.6. Today, Tbird hangs at "Sending login information," then when it seems to make progress, it hangs again at "looking for folders." The blue activity indicator in the Status bar stays on for a long time when I do anything, even deleting a message or emptying the Trash.

I tried going back to 115.5.2, and that didn't help. Updated to 115.6 again, and no change. I've emptied and compacted folders, and even tried deleting the msf files in Mail\Local Folders. No help.

This malfunctioning began, AFAIK, this morning. On both computers. Normallly, from clicking the Thunderbird icon to having the window fully operative and responding quickly to all clicks only takes about two-three seconds. Everything works extremely quickly.

Today, it seems to be having trouble communicating with Gmail, but I've never experienced such a problem before, and I've changed no passwords or login information.

Any ideas?

I experience similar issues on a semi-regular basis. Living on a bloody big island has it's disadvantages ... lol

It is caused by several servers in the chain going down or responding slowly or being routed around the globe instead of more directly, which means fetching messages is super slow and that makes Thunderbird seem sluggish.

This is not the fault of Thunderbird, if anything, it is your external network at fault.

Wisewiz · Dec 22, 2023

@das10 and @trumpy81:

Yeah, I decided it wasn't Tbird after I went to the releases page and got the last couple of versions from the server and installed them in turn. No help. Then, just to beat a nearly dead horse, I restored a recent MR image, and nothing changed then, either. Gmail wasn't down, 'cuz I was able to go the browser route with no problem.

Now all is restored to today's version of everything, and the speed of opening and getting the Inbox ready to use is much better than it was this morning. I called my provider (I'm on fixed wireless out here in the boonies, and it's about a zillion times as fast as the old satellite was) and found they've been having some connection probs in my area as well as lots of others. They're working on it

. We'll see tomorrow morning. Startup to ready is about six secs now, not sixty. Looking for two secs back soon. (Crossed fingers).

Thanks to you both. And best wishes of the season.

Update 22 Dec 2023: All is back to normal on both machines this morning. Halle-damn-lujah!

Dan